Explore .NET with Vikram Pendse

Windows 10 Phone Technical Preview - A quick overview

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 18:36:00 +0000

Hello World !

Writing down here after a long time. I keep posting articles on couple of blogs and eventually few of them got tagged under Channel 9 Blog4Fun as well. Last 6 months were crazy ! I am doing back to back talks on Windows Phone, Univeral Apps and Azure (IaaS) so was bit away from you all.

Today I am writing on Windows 10 Phone Technical Preview. I am one of the few lucky people in India who got access to Technical Preview for phone. I am calling myself lucky as most of my friends have high end Windows Phone (Even I have 1520) but like as usual "Bad news follows happy news". Everyone was jumping on Gabe Aul's twitter handle. The bad news is Windows 10 Phone Technical Preview will be only available on following phones :

Lumia 630
Lumia 635
Lumia 636
Lumia 638
Lumia 730
Lumia 830

Great ! What about my "flagship" devices like 1020,1520 etc. ? Oh wait you are in Queue !
What about HTC Phones? I will keep this question open.

In my personal view, rolling out low end devices as per my understanding is always good and effective. This helps to understand Bugs and bricking issues before it goes to flagship devices. Microsoft doing their best to get as close as possible to Developers and Consumers and allowing them to get bits via Insider Program. This also shows commitment of Microsoft towards community. In other aspect it is very effective channel for Microsoft to get feedback and reach out to end user.

There are so many discussions like Why it is not on other devices? How Windows 10 Phone Technical Preview demos shown on Lumia 1520 etc. Well if you read this blogpost especially "The earliest preview we’ve ever done" section it will address most of your queries.
So let's keep all debt aside and let's have a quick overview of Windows 10 Phone for Technical Preview which I am able to install on my Lumia 630. (It is currently running Cyan update)

As a per-requisite you need to enroll for Insider Program followed by downloading "Windows Insider" app here. Post installation you will get following screen provided your device falls in the list of supported device which I shared above.

There are 2 builds as "Insider Slow" and "Insider Fast". The name itself suggest the frequency of getting updated build. So you can choose either of choice. Note that installing this build will void your device warranty. So install this on your own risk. Some rumors are going on about the rollback facility but I do not see this option here. You need to reboot your phone. Post reboot you can verify the build by going to about menu. You will see something like below :

Now let's start the pictorial tour with short description.

1. Brand new Start / Home Screen with Full Screen Background and "Vertical Tile"

Here is the Program Screen with and without Wallpaper (Once you apply Wallpaper, Now you can see that at background in Program screen as well)

2. Notification Center now have a lot of improvements. Firstly you can have multiple setting options there. Also you can now individually remove notification in a group of notification. In our WP 8.1 once we swipe then entire set of notification goes away. Here you can remove or act on individual notification. Also now you have collapse button to get more metadata associated with notification.

3. New Keyboard and New Keyboard languages added. Good news for people in India. Most of the languages are now supported. I can see my language "Marathi" (We now don't have to rely on Hindi or Devanagari Keyboard). I can also see Kannada, Bengali etc. keyboards. Now we have small "dot" within keyboard for scrolling as well (Remember the Red dot mouse button on keyboard on IBM ThinkPad? This is something similar)

4. Calling, Calculator and Photos have new look. Photos app looks is better with new UI. Calculator now is way better. It is no more Calculator for numbers but more than that. Calling screen got new look too.

Not only Calculator but it seems most of the Apps are now dominated by "Hamburger" Menu which is surprise !

5. Folders is no longer Folders app rather we have multiple folders kind of app. I will not call it as full functional File Explorer but overall this Folders App looks good.

6. Alarms is not just alarms, it is now a Combo of pinnable (Pin to Start) apps/features like Alarms, World Clock, Time and Stop Watch. All in one kind of functionality. Alarms are actionable and more informative than earlier.

7. New Setting UI where you will get lost completely. Not because options are removed but now they are logically arranged in categories.

8. Cortana now have "Hamburger" menu, She is improved dramatically (Azure ML it is? ;-) ..my wild guess).

Last screen allows you to share feedback for Cortana. Well I have already shared lot of feedback on most of the glitches.

So that is what I want to share with you. I tried to show you the pictorial tour. Right now we don't have any APIs or SDKs in place. So I am holding my horses here. I will try to post few more deep dive reviews as soon as we progress with builds and I progress with my evangelism.

If you asked me conclusion of this post or my views on Windows 10 Phone Technical Preview then it will be like this :

Amazing UI which still needs improvement. Most of the themes issues needs to be fixed. Themes for phone and Cortana are mismatching. Few apps are getting hang, few options in Settings are freezing in between. I did not observed any automatic restarts or reboot. I don't have SIM in my device but I assume there should not be any silly issues like autocalling or random calling etc. Overall amazing compare to Windows Phone current build in terms of capability, simplicity and features. I am still missing "Jumplist" and "Alphabetically Sorted" Settings options in Settings.Need some good wallpapers and ring tones. Looking ahead for some Apps specific for this Windows 10 Phone platform which will showcase features of the platform. Overall No special observations in Camera, Picture Quality, Audio and Video. I have not tried "flac" files for Music. IE I don't see anything special (My overall IE usage is very low).

On the other hand what i realized so far with Windows 10 Phone Technical Preview is most of the common sense features for which people wrote dozens of apps and loaded on Store are now part of Windows 10 Phone Technical Preview either as feature or as default provided apps by Microsoft ( For example Alarms, World Clock, Stop watch etc). So I think new apps will be better with better set of features and rich APIs once the entire ecosystem comes to life.

I will soon share more insights on Windows 10 Phone Technical Preview and I would like to hear your feedback as well. Feel free to buzz me on Twitter ( @VikramPendse)

See you soon !

Vikram.

Text To Speech and Cortana in Windows Phone 8.1

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Wed, 07 May 2014 14:33:00 +0000

Hi !

I have written a blog post on www.dotnetcurry.com on Text To Speech in Windows Phone 8.1 where I have shared information on various aspects of Speech in Windows Phone including Cortana, Here is URL :

http://www.dotnetcurry.com/showarticle.aspx?ID=1005

Do read the post and let me know your feedback ! I am bit occupied in //publish event so I will be writing more soon here on this blog. Till then enjoy my post on DotNetCurry

Vikram.

First look at Windows Phone 8.1 Emulator

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 15:23:00 +0000

Hi! Hope you already know about the wonderful announcements made in Build 2014 recently about Windows, Azure and Windows Phone. So we are now in new era of Windows Phone as Windows Phone 8.1. I am here blogging on Windows Phone since it was in version 7. Journey continues and as a part of this ongoing long journey, today I am going to share what new things you can observe, analysis and utilize if you are planning to build Apps for Windows Phone 8.1. Many of us who have not yet installed the new bits might be under impression that it will not be very different emulator from 8.0. In reality you can see and experience tons of changes, some are small changes and some are totally new.

Windows Phone 8.1 SDK and/or Tools are now part of Visual Studio Update 2 RC. So now once you update your Visual Studio 2013 with this update, you are all set for building apps on Windows Phone 8.1. What only thing I don’t like here is I don’t get ISO for this and Update happens over the wire. It took lot of time (Almost 5-6 hours) to download and install, especially in countries like India where you have low bandwidth, it is painful. You can download Update 2 RC from here

New Windows Phone 8.1 Project :

First thing you will notice once you install tooling via Update 2 RC is Windows Phone Project Templates are now under Store Apps like shown below:

You can then choose Specific Template from Windows Phone Apps category like shown here:

So now we have 2 Set of Templates one with suffix (Windows Phone) and other with (Windows Phone Silverlight), so what is the difference and when to use what?

Answer is simple! If you have existing Windows Phone 8 App and if you wish to leverage some new features of 8.1 without modifying much of your current code then you need to take Windows Phone Silverlight App. Please visit here to know more about Silverlight Windows Phone 8.1 Project Templates If you take this template it does show you OS Switching dialog shown below:

If you choose Windows Phone Only Project Template (without Silverlight suffix) then your App will be by default taken to Windows Phone 8.1 Windows Runtime XAML(Same platform which used for building Windows 8 Apps). In this particular post I am purposefully not discussing things like Backward Compatibility and Universal Project App since I need to talk about it with you in great depth in my upcoming posts. So for the time being, let us quickly digest the different project templates. Another significant name change is for Panorama, Now Panorama is replaced with Hub. Let us talk more about Hub and WebView App templates in upcoming posts. So if you are planning to first do a Hello World and wish to put a MessageBox, it will not work as I said this project templates inclined towards Windows Runtime.

private async void btnClick_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{ MessageDialog msdlg = new MessageDialog("Hello World !!", "My First WP8.1 App");

await msdlg.ShowAsync();}

Home Screen :

Here is the First look of Emulator :

Once you run Emulator, you will notice couple of new things in Additional Tools as well as on Toolbar for Emulator, like now we have Multitouch Option here. This can be used to Test Multitouch scenarios. I have shown one scenario below where I am scaling one Image with this Multitouch.

Volume Up / Down :

Now you can change the Volume by pressing “Volume Up/Down” key on emulator which will give you a quick dashboard to control Sound for Phone and Apps like shown below:

Additional Tools:

Most beautiful feature in Additional Tool I found is “Checkpoint”, Checkpoint helps you take Snapshot of your emulator state. You can Create or Restore old checkpoints and delete the same. Idea behind checkpoint is to fix and freeze the environment so that Developers don’t need to do common things repetitively like loading Contacts or Settings etc.

Another good additions are SD Card, Sensors and Notifications, I will talk about them with examples in coming posts. For today we will just have a look at them in a pictorial way.

Camera:

Camera by default loads burst mode and not it shows couple of more options like Lens, Quick Front Camera toggling etc.

Cortana:

Much awaited Cortana helps you as your own Personal Digital Assistance. You can invoke it from Apps or from Search. You need to sign in with your Live Account on emulator to experience it. I played couple of Songs in front of my Laptop and guess what ! Cortana worked like Shaazam for me and identified what Music I am playing. This itself shows power of Cortana, Here is the first look:

Calendar:

Here is the new improved look of Calendar which now shows bit of Weather and also gives to look in different views like Day, Week, Month and Year.

Dialing / Calling:

Till Windows Phone 8 we use to Dial and Number and post call we use to Save the Number. Here in 8.1 now, once you type number and if you know its correct you can then save it right away by clicking on Save button on Dial Pad. Also it now shows Number of calls made by adding suffice (<Number of times dialed>). It also shows People icon next to number to navigate quickly to Contact. Also it is now showing Speed Dial.

Developer Power Tools for Windows Phone 8.1 :

Here is the Quick Tool for profiling your Windows Phone 8.1 App which takes Traces (Performance Recorder),Application Verifier and Performance Monitor. It does not required to any new learning, it is easy and user friendly.

I hope with this little information shared above, you must have got glimpse of Windows Phone 8.1. Actually it is much more than that in reality. So let us explore more on Windows Phone 8.1 here in coming days. Let me know your feedback and keep visiting here for more Windows Phone 8.1 stuff.

Vikram.

Building Windows Phone Apps using App Studio Article in DNC.NET Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 11:38:00 +0000

Hi !

After a long gap.. I started writing again !

While my offline sessions continues, I wrote an article in leading .NET Developer Magazine DNC Magazine run by fellow MVP in Pune. It is the 11th Issue of this Magazine. I wrote a full length article covering all possible aspects of building Windows Phone Applications using App Studio Beta.

I highly recommend to Subscribe and Download the Magazine here . It covers lot of other wonderful .NET Articles too.

You can also read the complete App Studio Article on DotNetCurry site here.

Do check it out an let me know your feedback !.

Vikram.

My New Microsoft MVP Status, Xamarin and Steve Ballmer

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 11:24:00 +0000

Hello everyone ! long time…

My New MVP Status and Summary of Journey as a MVP from last 6 years :

Writing after a long time. Yes ! I am no more Silverlight MVP !! I am now Windows Phone MVP rather 2nd Windows Phone MVP in India after my best friend Mayur Tendulkar who won the title recently. I won Microsoft MVP title 6th time in a row.

As a commitment, I will resume my blogging soon and will post some good stuff on Windows Phone like I use to give my best for Silverlight. You will not believe but the Transition from Silverlight to Windows Phone was not easy and equally “Painful” for me. With the growing popularity of HTML5 (I still call it as Hype), Silverlight lost its momentum. This put me in position to start look for new avenues and I found Windows Phone is one of the close one (XAML + C#). My mind is yet to accept that I love Windows 8 since I have Windows 8 but neither I upgraded to 8.1 nor I am fond of Metro aka Store UI, I am still prefer desktop mode. Not to blame my mind and not to blame Microsoft. It is my region who plays trick with me.Where are those devices in India?? Whatever ! and who cares.. I always worked for Community and I devote my time either here or with my wonderful local .NET User Group (Pune User Group, which is one of the most active and biggest UG in India or rather South Asia)

Xamarin :

While I was on vacation to Goa for South Asia MVP Open Days, I had lot of interaction with Xamarin Tools and enthusiasts in the same community. We exchanged our thoughts and what I found more interesting is that I can use C# to build Android and iOS apps.So it might happen that out of interest you could see me writing about Xamarin and talking about Xamarin using C#. Though I will be learning Xamarin and building expertise around just for my hobby and passion towards mobility, My entire focus will be always and always and always on Windows Phone Platform and it will be always at Top in my Community commitment list. So now its Windows Phone 24x7 on my head !

Steve Ballmer :

I personally feel that Steve Ballmer did a fantastic jobs after Bill Gates. During the Steve Ballmer era both Phone and Windows saw lot of innovation. Being and Becoming Microsoft CEO is not a easy job. I as a Microsoft Technology enthusiast will surely miss him and specially his love towards “Developers Developers Developers” .Since I am just a Senior Software Developer and not even hold 1% of Microsoft Stock on NASDAQ, I am holding myself back from posting my views on this topic and making shit on forums and blogs who are currently running long lasting discussions about Steve Ballmer’s replacement.I tell you, If you love Windows Phone then just post on your Facebook wall “I Love Windows Phone”. Within a minute people will start shitting on your wall with Android and iPhone comparisons and facts sheets with dumb videos and Urls. Even its your personal view and people in your friend list not even developed “Hello World” on any Windows Phone, Android or iPhone, It became a habit of people to criticize Microsoft. So I tell my mind in such situations..”Either live with it or leave it !”. My friend and fellow Windows Phone MVP written a good post about this shitty habit here :

No Water on Moon?? Blame Microsoft !!

Whatever.. I love Windows Phone and other Microsoft Products irrespective of what people have their opinion for it. I will keep on working as Community Member and keep on contributing on Microsoft Technologies till I don’t step down from my work.

Thanks once again for making visit here and I will make sure you keep visiting here more and more in coming days !

Vikram.

Introduction to Speech Capabilities in Windows Phone 8 – Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:47:00 +0000

Today I am going to post last part of this series, Hope Part1 and Part2 went well with you and hope you tried out the Speech Capabilities of Windows Phone 8. We already talked a lot about the different approaches of Text To Speech, In this we will see exactly reverse approach that its Speech To Text. Most of the time it is considered to be vary hard and difficult to implement, But with the given APIs in Windows Phone 8 makes them pretty easy to implement.So Lets see how you can build such app quickly.

Take a new Windows Phone 8 Application Project. Design I will leave that to you, Right now I have put this inside a Pivot item like this :

XAML :

<phone:PivotItem Header="Speech2Text" DoubleTap="LoadSpeechToText">
</phone:PivotItem>

C# Code :

private async void LoadSpeechToText(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
       {
           SpeechRecognizerUI myspeechRecognizer = new SpeechRecognizerUI();
           myspeechRecognizer.Settings.ExampleText = "Ex. Call,Search,Run";
           myspeechRecognizer.Settings.ListenText = "Listening...";
           ….

}

This will bring up the Popup where you need to suppose to talk or give command, To enable this functionality, you need to add two more lines of code

myspeechRecognizer.Settings.ReadoutEnabled = true;
myspeechRecognizer.Settings.ShowConfirmation = true;

Once you run this you will see our regular Speech Popup like this :

But just showing this screen is not sufficient, we need to capture the Text and display it to user, So for this we need to add few more lines of code

SpeechRecognitionUIResult Speechresult = await speechRecognizer.RecognizeWithUIAsync();
if (Speechresult.ResultStatus == SpeechRecognitionUIStatus.Succeeded)
{
MessageBox.Show(Speechresult.RecognitionResult.Text);
}

Now you can see the result on a MessageBox, While doing the test I said “Nokia” and you can see the result on the screen.

And here you can see the Result on MessageBox. Now its your decision where you want this piece of code to be use, There are lot of Business cases where you can use this kind of Speech Recognition. You can use this to launch certain Commands in your application or you can use to record voice as well and convert to text for any purpose.Hope you will find this useful and thus quick end of my Speech Capability series, I have kept it short but in coming days I am going to put detail article on these features by taking a Business Case.Till then Happy Coding, I will soon post a Calendar related article and we will see how we can use that API at our best.

Vikram.

Introduction to Speech Capabilities in Windows Phone 8 – Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:02:00 +0000

Hope you enjoyed my last article on Speech Capability in Windows Phone 8, Today I am posting another part or you can say little extension to what I did in Part 1.

In the first part we saw how we can incorporate the built in Speech Capability with the given set of Speech APIs in Windows Phone 8 SDK and how they have edge over earlier Windows Phone builds like 7 and above.We saw I simple Hello World kind of demo, Today I am going to demonstrate how we can leverage the SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) using Speech APIs in Windows Phone.

What is SSML ? :

As per W3C, SSML can be defined as :

SSML is part of a larger set of markup specifications for voice browsers developed through the open processes of the W3C. It is designed to provide a rich, XML-based markup language for assisting the generation of synthetic speech in Web and other applications.

Possible Scenarios of SSML Implementation : This is very useful in a multilingual app where you need to implement Text to Speech of the content in different languages. Also it provides high level control over the grammer, choice of language, voice of male or female etc. with the help of tags defined in SSML.So let’s see a simple demo of incorporating SSML in Windows Phone 8, Then how you will use that in your app, Its your call !

Namespaces :

using Windows.Phone.Speech.Synthesis;

Design (XAML) :

<phone:PivotItem Header="SSML" DoubleTap="LoadSSML">
<TextBlock x:Name="TTSSSML" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Height="500" Margin="33,26,0,0" TextWrapping="Wrap" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="389"/>
</phone:PivotItem>

C# Code :

private async void LoadSSML(object sender,RoutedEventArgs e)
{ … }

I am using an async method here which have 2 parts, First will just display the Text on the Textblock and second part will actually reading of that SSML markup using Speech Synthesizer, Here is the first part :

//Speech Synthesis Markup Language for Display
          TTSSSML.Text = @"<speak version=""1.0""
           xmlns=""http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis"" xml:lang=""ja-JP"">
           <voice gender=""male"">
               趣味は日本語を勉強することです
               趣味はいろんな新しい食べ物に挑戦することです
               パソコンいじりが得意なので、何か手伝えることがありましたら声をかけて下さい。
           </voice>
           </speak>";

Here you can see the SSML Markup, I agree, I am not SSML Expert and I have taken this piece of SSML tags by doing some research over internet and I spend little time to convert it to Japanese (I actually can read and write Japanese :) ..its a different story ) instead of keeping it in simple English. In your scenario all you need to do is change the “ja-JP” attribute to your own language like en-US etc and try out with that specific language content.You can also change gender to male or female with <voice gender=”<value>> attribute. All assumption is you have Speech enabled on your phone and also you have marked or enabled Speech in manifest file as I have demonstrated in my first article. Then rest is just routine coding nothing else.Now I am showing part two of this snippet, After looking at it, you will realize that I hardly making any changes here :

//Actual Speech in Japanese Language using SSML
            var ttsJP = new SpeechSynthesizer();
            await ttsJP.SpeakSsmlAsync(@"<speak version=""1.0""
            xmlns=""http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis"" xml:lang=""ja-JP"">
            <voice gender=""male"">
                趣味は日本語を勉強することです
                趣味はいろんな新しい食べ物に挑戦することです
                パソコンいじりが得意なので、何か手伝えることがありましたら声をかけて下さい。
            </voice>
            </speak>");

All set ! Now just press F5 and Enjoy ! here are few screenshots if you are trying to visualize how it will look on device.

In English version of SSML :

In Japanese version of SSML

That’s all ! Hope you like this part, Till now in both parts we actually saw Text To Speech Capability in a nutshell, In my next article which might be last in the short speech capability series, I am going to talk on Speech To Text. Post these parts, I will move to Maps for a while and then will come back with few more interesting and deep dive articles.Till then..enjoy Windows Phone 8

Vikram.

Introduction to Speech Capabilities in Windows Phone 8 – Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:54:00 +0000

After a long..I am writing blog, I hope and I wish I will resume blogging like I use to in past. Lots of things happened in past few months. I changed my job,got married and what not ! Well, Life !

Today I am going to share few things about Speech Capabilities in Windows Phone 8, Although I haven’t talked about it in past for Windows Phone 7-7.5 just because there were lots of limitations in this area in terms of APIs and Accuracy as well.With Phone 8 things are totally different. Earlier till 7.5 it was totally dependent on Bing Service which has to be online and network or internet connection was mandatory to have.Now it works offline without having any data/internet connection. Thanks to Microsoft for this improvement. Little Thanks to Microsoft MVPs like me ! (little pat on back)..surprised? Well I was a volunteer and part of a Secret mission, Proud to get associated with it, Although our contribution was small compare to efforts taken by Microsoft Product Group Members but it was got recognized in recent Microsoft TechEd 2013 at Pune, India by Sanket Akerkar,Managing Director, Microsoft India at Microsoft.

Well, Lets come back to main topic, So I am actually planning to write a big article but now plan to break it in few,So today let’s build a Hello World type App to understand TTS (Text To Speech) Capabilities.

Initial Work :

Open a brand new Windows Phone Project from Visual Studio 2012

Choose Windows Phone OS 8.0

Design :

<phone:Pivot Title="Speech Capability">
            
            <phone:PivotItem Header="howdy">
                <Button x:Name="TTSHowdy" Content="Hello World !" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Width="456" Height="87" VerticalAlignment="Top" Margin="0,82,0,0" Click="TTSHowdy_Click"/>
            </phone:PivotItem>

</phone:Pivot>

I am actually putting it in a Pivot Navigation as I wish to demonstrate couple of more features of Speech within a single app, In your design you can very well change the layout.

Namespace Required :

using Windows.Phone.Speech.Synthesis;
using Windows.Phone.Speech.Recognition;

C# Code :

private async void TTSHowdy_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            var TTS = new SpeechSynthesizer();
            await TTS.SpeakTextAsync("Welcome to Microsoft TechEd India 2013 in Pune");
        }

So SpeakTextAsync basically an async method which take 2 parameters as Content and Content and ObjectState. So similarly we can pass big string or textblock data to this method so that it will speak the content for you with the default voices installed on your phone.

Here is the output : (On actual device/emulator, you can hear the Sound )

Now after this Hello World, Lets build another Pivot which will display as well as play all the voices installed on your phone. To showcase this, I am making use of “Long List Selector” on my UI.

Design :

<phone:PivotItem Header="voices" DoubleTap="LoadTTSAllVoices">
<phone:LongListSelector x:Name="llstNames" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Width="456" Height="232" VerticalAlignment="Top" Margin="0,3,0,0"/>
</phone:PivotItem>

C# Code :

List<string> lstVoices = new List<string>();

private async void LoadTTSAllVoices(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
       {
           //Get all the Voices
           foreach (var voice in InstalledVoices.All)
           {
               lstVoices.Add(voice.DisplayName + ", " + voice.Language + ", " + voice.Gender);
               using (var text2speech = new SpeechSynthesizer())
               {
                   text2speech.SetVoice(voice);
                   await text2speech.SpeakTextAsync("Hello world! I'm " + voice.DisplayName + ".");
               }

               llstNames.ItemsSource = lstVoices.ToList();
           }
       }

Basically, This async methods loops over collection of Voices installed and add each one to the List<T>. So once the voice is picked and set in the SetVoice Method, We can then use the same method SpeakTextAsync which we used above to read the text content.So after reading via each of the voice, We add the voice reader information to a List<T> and bind it further to Long List Selector. So it reads the content and add each voice to the list one after the another.

Here is the Output : (On actual device/emulator, you can hear the Sound )

So that all I want to cover in Part –1, I will post another interesting stuff in upcoming parts, I am actually planning to post 2-3 more.Meanwhile you can try this and check the point to remember or conclusion :

1. Your PC/Laptop Speakers should be on to experience the voices coming out

2. There is no separate SDKs or Tools to be installed, These Speech APIs comes by default with the Phone SDK.

3. You need to Turn On Microphone and Speech Capability option from WMAppManifest.xml like this :

So that all I want to cover in Part –1 , I am already in progress for Part 2 and expect few more deep dive stuff on Speech Capabilities in coming parts as we progress. Do enjoy and try out the above capabilities and feel free to share your feedbak.

Vikram.

MCTS : Microsoft Silverlight 4 Development Exam Guide (70-506) by Packt Publishing

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:04:00 +0000

Hello, After a long time I got chance to come back here.I will soon resume blogging in month of August. Last 4-5 months were horrible due to workload and some family commitments,but now everything is coming to normal and soon I will start posting some amazing Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 stuff here.

Today I am talking about a nice handy and in depth Microsoft Certification Exam Guide for Silverlight 4 Development exam written by Johnny Tordgeman for Pack Publishing.

Johnny who own expertise on various Web Technologies within Microsoft Platform and who is also a Community Contributor and active Speaker in various events done very amazing write-up in this title.He done a great hard work to give a high quality Exam Guide on Silverlight 4 Development to the Developers,Designers and Others who are doing Certification in Silverlight Track or wish to pursue Silverlight Certification.

This book is a complete Exam Guide in all terms, Great Content with clear Screenshots wherever applicable along with Samples and Questions at the end of each Chapter.These Sample Questions gives Reader a feel of how the actual questions might be in Microsoft Silverlight 4 Exam with “Test your knowledge” section.

This book is not only Exam Guide but a complete Book with very unique content that each Silverlight Developer and Designers should have with them today.There are total 8 Chapters in this book which covers all the important aspects of Silverlight 4.

Before this book got published for people, it was also reviewed by my friend and fellow Silverlight MVP Kunal Chowdhury (http://www.kunal-chowdhury.com/) and Evan Hutnick from Telerik.

So if you are planning for this Silverlight 4 Certification or already doing study for this exam or even if you are Silverlight Developer, Then I highly recommend this book and you should get a copy for yourself right today !

http://www.packtpub.com/mcts-microsoft-silverlight-4-development-70-506-certification-guide/book#overview

Wish you all the best for your exam !

Vikram.

The little Story of “I Unlock Joy” event by Microsoft and Pune User Group

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:08:00 +0000

This post is about recent “I Unlock Joy” event happened in Pune which was conducted by Microsoft and Pune User Group.

Little History :

I remember I got myself a HTC HD7 in early January 2011. I even did a big post here with fire saying “Its White Elephant” in India.When I saw Tweets,Photos and Mails by people in US who showing off their Windows Phones in early days of Windows Phone, Frankly I was very angry thinking why each and every thing comes to India when Entire US and Europe people about to throw that piece of technology and switch to its version next.I even had fight at various level to get a Test Device for me but my all attempts result was “Fail”, so finally I got HD7 for myself from local shop, by the time few of my friends from User Group ordered it via some online site and got their shipment before me.Neither me or my friends who ordered it online even before it was made available in India officially bothered about Money and what will happen to it. That time even Mango build was not available.

I was already going through lot of frustrating moments due to Silverlight and HTML5 issues around year back and thanks to Windows Phone, It pulled me back on track.Me,Mayur and few other folks from Community started talking about this device from last year.Frankly, early response was very low since most of the people was not having device and was not sure about future of Windows Phone since it was not made available in India.

First call on “I Unlock Joy” :

I remember that around October 2011,I was taking snaps of some Star Fishes near Tarkarli Beach in Sindhudurga and all of a sudden I got a call from Aviraj saying “You are in conference with Mayur Mahesh and Dhaval for upcoming Windows Phone event” ..I replied “What??..Microsoft is planning event on Windows Phone??”..Trust me call went for 5 minutes where each one just saying “what”, “when”,”ok lets see”,”keep us posted”.Then nothing happened on this till Mid December.

Trust me..before this call..no one was sure about this event.Even we were not sure whether we will be able to host such event or not, Even for Microsoft, it was very first such event in India.

The Plan :

Earlier I was not happy with the event plan just because I misunderstood agenda and found it too much professional, I raise this concern to Mahesh (@maheshmitkari),Mayur (@mayur_tendulkar) and Aviraj (@aviraj111)saying “There are people in Pune, who don’t know what is Windows Phone,How it looks like or they have not even saw or touch that device and how they can build apps for that?”, Thanks to Aviraj Mayur and Mahesh who simplified it for me and told me that its from Hello World to Get Certify from Marketplace over span of 4 Full Days.So after that call on next weekend we started talking more about this event.

Wait..but will people come to this event by paying App Hub Fees?? :

Humm..another 1 hour just went on this discussion,Frankly among our Team, only Mayur was aware of AppHub process since he had account and submitted one or two apps in Marketplace.He and Mahesh and Aviraj show confidence then with 50-50 mind I also said to myself..lets do it people will come ! So Aviraj then given inputs on I Unlock Joy and how it works (MS people really work hard for each of their things,that I re-realize again on that day).He also told about Prizes and how overall things should go if we as Pune User Group want to do it with Microsoft.

Execution of Plan :

Here comes our UG Manager Mahesh Mitkari, He drafted overall plan including Days of Trainings,Venue etc.Thanks to Microsoft, This time there was no “Mission :Find Venue” for us ! As usual my all time favorite question came for discussion “What about Food??..are we giving and not giving??” ..Suddenly Mahesh replied “Food later ! First think about event”..I said “Rest is Ok,but Food is equally important” ..Mayur said “If possible do it or people have to eat somewhere around the venue” ..Aviraj was on bit silent mode during this discussion since Budget for this was already allocated and now it was our turn to manage all in that amount.Finally with the years of experience Mahesh have in community, He managed the food for us. Since we took it up this event under support of MS, Content and Speaker for event was from Pune User Group. Mayur took the ownership of this speaking engagement and hence that pain part was already taken care.

Then there was lot of confusion about allowing “Individual”,”Students” and “Business” types of AppHub Account holders.But we decided that aim of this event is to “Empower individuals with great skills and great device”, so we decided to cut off Students and Companies and fixed our agenda accordingly.

Since this was very first event so we decided to keep the number of attendees equal with the capacity of hall or even less will do.

Registration Process and getting people to Venue : Mission Impossible

We hosted a lovely Website using ASP.NET MVC + Cloud for this event using shiny logos and stuff.

For first week, there was not a single registration, all we had is test records entered by us for testing of that portal.Week went bad for us.No one turn to site for registration.We were almost feeling dead at that moment since it was January 1st week and we were about to kick off the event from end of January 2012, we paid for venue, book food counters, done all formalities with MS,ok but where are attendees??

Mahesh Me,Mayur and Aviraj come back to our old conclusion “Its paid event so people are not coming ..maybe?” since Pune User Group events are never paid.So how to solve this problem??

Meetings Meetings..Calls Calls .. :

We decided to do quick analysis of this thing and jumped to a conclusion that it was not about spending money but we came to know about following concerns :

Its Credit Card thing..is it safe?
Will they pull some extra money from Background?
Do they will come to know whether I am using illegal software?
I will seriously get Windows Phone if I build apps for I Unlock Joy?

Ok ! we got our answers, the very first thing we did is added a big “FAQ” section on our site and made publicity of the same, we captured most common uncommon and unique Questions,As a result, in last week of Registration count went to almost 40+ and we closed registration.We are all set for First ever such event by any User Group in India..Get Set Go !

Overall Event :

Now the next tension on mind was, whether people will adopt the skills and able to build and submit apps or not,else again everything will go waste !

Kudos to Mayur Tendulkar and Amol Vaidya ( and me as a Backup Speaker with full support from MSPs Omkar,Sneha and Apporva) who carried out training successfully.4 Days were full of gyan and not like typical sessions happens around where speaker comes in drag drop things and execute. Some real code and real stuff happened here in Pune.Thanks to AKant (Abhishek Kant who was our Ex-MVP Lead and now Country Manager for Telerik in India) for his valuable time at Keynote session and giving Telerik Controls for free to all attendees there at event.

Very Special Thanks to Harish Vaidyanathan (@harishv ), Girish Joshi, Aditee Rele (@aditeerele ) and our big brother from Microsoft (@aviraj111), without these people it was impossible to unlock the joy !

What went wrong in this event :

Shortage of Power Plugs and less power extensions at Venue on Day1, From Day 2 we fixed that by adding more plugs-extensions
Delay in distribution of Pen Drives, instead of day 1 people got that on day 4
Connectivity and WiFi was not available due to infra issues
1 Test Device out of 2 was not Mango, we updated that to Mango from Day 2

What people went home with :

Some amazing knowledge about Windows Phone Application Development
Confidence to build Windows Phone Apps
Joy and Fun moment during all 4 Days and great device experience with Test Devices kept for them
Some even went away with Nokia Lumia 800

What’s the outcome of all this 4 month story from October 2011 to January 2012 ? :

Some 30+ Quality Apps already in Marketplace from this event
Around 45+ are due for Certification
Around 20+ new apps getting developed from people who already submitted apps
Me, Mahesh and Mayur declared officially from Microsoft as “Agents of Joy” and now visible on Microsoft’s I Unlock Joy Portal

http://www.microsoft.com/india/developer/windowsphone/

Click on “Agents of Joy” tile at the bottom !

Final Day :

I Unlock Joy Members snap with Harish Vaidyanathan at Pune

Conclusion :

Its for the “Community” by the “Community” to build more better and better “Community”, so despite of all challenges we faced.The passion of working towards “Community” made all things easy.

There are so many things happen in those 4 months, so its difficult for me to put down all things here,still I tried my best to cover up the entire story.

I am proud that I am associated with such a wonderful community in Pune. Microsoft and Pune User Group Rocks !!

Thanks to all who are directly or indirectly involved in this activity, its difficult to take all names since its very big community effort.so thanks to all !

After this event, Girish Joshi from Microsoft asked Me and Mahesh to give a snap of ours and we given below snap :

Well ! There is again a Big story behind this photo which we took at midnight at Mahesh’s home..that story..well..some other time !

Vikram.

Resolving Prohibited Applications 2.7.2 Issue in Windows Phone Application Certification Process

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:41:00 +0000

If you are building a Windows Phone Application especially which deals with Location based Services or Location related information share,then this blogpost might come to your help.

Recently,I submitted one Windows Phone Application titled as "LocateMe" to Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace as a normal procedure of Marketplace of Microsoft, After 2-3 Days I got email as follows :

When I logged into AppHub account, I got one PDF file having detail description of above mail along with complete error details. When I saw that PDF, It was written like :

Since such kind of rejection is very new to me,For day or two I was wondering what to do and resolved so that my application can clear certification.Since comments was clear on the test result like this :

One of my friend Mayur Tendulkar suggested that my application is using Location Service without User Consent or User's permission which indirectly crossing Privacy of the User of that application, In other way its like taking or using User's location without giving him any intimation or notification. This was the issue which my application was doing.

Solution :

I came across this blogpost which exactly states the above problem, Solution suggested there is to create a Custom Page with On/Off Switch which can Enable or Disable Location which will be provided by User of the application.

Somehow I felt it as little extra work in terms of coding and navigation to user.So I given a try to a very simple solution and I am happy that it worked for me and my application came out of this Privacy issue and got certified. I just given a message box like this :

MessageBoxResult result = MessageBox.Show("For Tracking on Map you need to Enable Location,For More Information Read Privacy Statement,Are you sure you want to enable Tracking?", "LocateMe", MessageBoxButton.OKCancel);

                if (result == MessageBoxResult.OK)
                {
                   // Turn On the Location
                }
                else
                {
                    // Turn Off the Location
                }

This saved me from that extra step of navigating to Location Setup Page and Set Reset location and come back to application.This helped me to get consent of user to use Location on his/her device.This allows user to choose to Turn On or Off the location service and does not force the user anyway and does not disclose any location data of user anywhere.

To be on safer side, I added a Privacy Statement Page in Application Bar Menu so that User can know more about in what way and terms the User location which is his/her private data is getting used.This page looks like below :

What I learn from this problem :

Its not always mandatory to have a separate page just for turning On or Off the location but it can just be done by a message box since its all about giving notification to the user and asking his/her permission to use and or share his/her location in any way.

Since I didn't came across any valid or legal solution for this problem,hence I thought I should share my experience with you all, So in future any of you got into such problem, should not be a big issue for your application during the Certification Process of Microsoft Marketplace.

Although in terms of legal aspect, this is not a valid or legal solution which is full proof,however I will claim this only as "work around" to get ride of Prohibited Applications 2.7.2 Issue in Windows Phone Application Certification.If you want More information about 2.7.2 section,I encourage you to go through following MSDN Documentation available on this subject :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh184841%28v=VS.92%29.aspx

With this, I conclude this post, The only intention of this post is to make you aware of this issue and not get lost anywhere like I got in initial go of my application development.This might help you to be extra careful while you are building your app especially location based.So make sure you keep these things in your mind and while building such kinds of apps, think from all aspects and build your own Privacy Statement or Policy according to need of your application.

Well, I recently submitted few apps and in my next post I am talking some interesting things happen last month in my town where me and my User Group friends conducted Windows Phone Training Program, till that time, Just check out my "LocateMe" app and let me know your feedback.Take care and see you soon.

Warning : Above post and solution given came out of my own experience and might not applicable as a general solution to all generic location based applications on Windows Phone Marketplace,Hence use this post as just a guideline and not as a final and/or Legal solution in any way.Only intention of this post is to create awareness about this Prohibited Applications 2.7.2 Issue in Windows Phone Application Certification Process.

Vikram.

Share Status and Link on Socials in Windows Phone

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:43:00 +0000

Hope you all doing good.Sorry for the great delay here,I am almost working for all 7 days in week and that too on SQL Server – SSIS which is totally Alien to me but now I have good hands-on (In future you might get to see few post on that as well) for a critical project in my company. Due to this I couldn’t meet you here.

Today finally I got sometime to spend here and on Windows Phone and Silverlight, So I thought I can share something quickly with you before I get to other big topics.Our today’s topic is small but very unique and useful. Today I am going to talk about 2 set of Tasks and how to use them effectively available with new Windows Phone SDK as ShareStatusTask and ShareLinkTask which comes under Microsoft.Phone.Tasks Namespace.So lets start with it.

So all we need is a simple Textbox and Button like this :

XAML Code :

<Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">
<TextBox x:Name="txtStatus" Height="100" />
<Button x:Name="btnShare" Height="100" Width="200" Margin="0,358,0,149" Click="btnShare_Click">Share</Button>
</Grid>

Namespace :

using Microsoft.Phone.Tasks;

C# Code :

private void btnShare_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
ShareStatusTask mySocialTasks = new ShareStatusTask();

mySocialTasks.Status = txtStatus.Text.ToString() + System.DateTime.Now.ToString();

mySocialTasks.Show();
}

Above code is simple, We have a ShareStatusTask which comes with Property Status like this in ShareStatusTask which is Inherited from ShareTaskBase whose Show() method Causes the sharing dialog to be displayed to the user.

public string Status { get; set; }

public void Show();

So we are passing our/user defined Status message from Textbox txtStatus and appending DateTime with it (You can append anything or customize as per your need), Once you click on Share you will get Share Dialog like this :

Sorry for bit low screenshot, but you can see the list of Socials available on your device as

Windows Live
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

If something new comes up tomorrow might get added to list, So all you need to do is pick the Socials and go ahead and share. Please note that this does not work on Windows Phone Emulator so you need to port this on actual Windows Phone Device.Also note that availability of Socials on your phone depends on your configuration and choice to have.So Don’t waste your time in emulator since it will not give any output or will not give any response.

On similar lines, we can implement ShareLinkTask Class like this :

private void btnShare_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
ShareLinkTask mySocialLinks = new ShareLinkTask();

          mySocialLinks.Title = "Explore .NET with Vikram Pendse";
          mySocialLinks.LinkUri = new Uri("http://pendsevikram.blogspot.com", UriKind.Absolute);
          mySocialLinks.Message = txtStatus.Text.ToString() + System.DateTime.Now.ToString();

mySocialLinks.Show();
}

Choose “Windows Phone Device” and hit F5, you can see in Output window how it ports to Device and confirm the same like this it got displayed in my VS Output Window : (Observe lines in Bold)

------ Deploy started: Project: Demo_ShareStatus_Task, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------
Deploying D:\Silverlight_On_Mobile\Demo_ShareStatus_Task\Demo_ShareStatus_Task\Bin\Debug\Demo_ShareStatus_Task.xap...
Connecting to Windows Phone Device...
The application is already installed on the device. Checking if an incremental deployment is possible...
Doing incremental deployment...
Updating information related to modified files...
Deployment of D:\Silverlight_On_Mobile\Demo_ShareStatus_Task\Demo_ShareStatus_Task\Bin\Debug\Demo_ShareStatus_Task.xap succeeded.
========== Deploy: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

Now your app is ready to test on your WP Device, But make note of 2 things before you deploy :

Phone is ON and at Home Screen is visible and not pin locked
Zune instance is up and running

Now start from App list like this : (Demo_ShareStatus Icon)

Type your Message :

Share Link and Select Social Networks like this :

Finally you can see this happening in real on your respective Social Networks, Like in my case this got posted on my Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn in one shot and at same time at all place like this :

Facebook :

Twitter :

LinkedIn :

So this is how you can share Status or Link in very short piece of Code by making use of ShareStatusTask and ShareLinkTask given by Windows Phone Development Environment. Now how to make use of these tasks in your app,I leave this for you to decide,Let me know if you need any help using this and also let me know your feedback.I hope you will enjoy this small post after a long time here. Now since I am bit relax from work schedule so I will be back soon with some more interesting posts on Windows Phone, WinRT and Silverlight soon.So keep visiting this place now.

Vikram.

I am speaking at 13th Edition of Microsoft Virtual Tech Days from 14 to 16 December 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:15:00 +0000

First of all very sorry for not posting anything from last month or more than that. I am actually totally occupied with some interesting Windows Phone 7 Project and also some amazing .NET & SQL BI assignments including SSIS and SSRS.This kept me extremely busy for last two months.But I kept on exploring the things and I will very soon resume blogging and very soon going to post some good stuff.

Out of all this, I am glad to announce that I will be speaking at 13th Edition of Microsoft Virtual Tech Days which will be hosted by Microsoft India. This is a complete online event with tons of good sessions for all 3 Days starting from 14th December to 16th December 2011.

I will be speaking on Day 3 inside “Windows Phone” Track on a very interesting topic titled as Best practices of designing apps for Windows Phone

I will be taking various design related topics in this discussion followed by Questions and Answers, Its scheduled at 01:45 PM IST, So Mark your calendars right away !

For more information about Microsoft Virtual Tech Days, Registration and Agenda for all 3 days,Visit http://www.virtualtechdays.com/

Do participate in Quiz and Questions and Answers sessions actively since there are lot of goodies to win for you :

So block your calendar right away ! I wish to meet you all there at my session. Also after that week, I assure not to take any logical or physical breaks and will resume postings here. So do make a visit here in coming weeks, some really exciting stuff is on your way.

Vikram.

Building your First Windows Metro style Application using Visual Studio 2011 on Windows 8

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:51:00 +0000

For a while keeping aside the hot topic of “Silverlight is dead”,I am coming back to normal activities and doing part of that I am putting a small post here just for those who have installed Windows 8 and wondering how overall things will work on their Windows 8 box.

I assume here that you have done with Windows 8 Developer Preview setup,For me,I installed Visual Studio 2011 as a separate installation.Frankly, it was not that smooth compare to Windows 8,it crashed 2-3 times.Well,with the assumption of successful installation, lets move ahead with our first “Hello World” kind of a Metro UI Application.

Our First Metro UI style App using Visual Studio 11 on Windows 8:

Once you installed Visual Studio,you will find the shortcut of the same on your Metro UI interface which is default in Windows 8 Developer Preview, so by clicking on that it will throw you with the Visual Studio 2011 IDE in Desktop mode which is very similar to your normal Windows Desktop in Windows 7

Once Visual Studio 2011 is open,Click on File>>New Project

Please see in the above snap, The one which is in red circle is your Windows Metro style Project template.Since this our first post,so I am not pushing too much content on you and leaving you in a state of confusion,so for other project templates in this category and what they do,that I will share in upcoming posts.So after selecting this template and giving a relevant name to your app, Click on OK to move ahead.

Visual Studio 2011 :

There are significant improvements in IDE and new features are there but right now I am purposefully not pulling them here just to keep our focus on App.So if you are familiar with Visual Studio 2010 then you will not struggle much with the Designer and Code Window.

Our First App using RichTextBlock :

As you know that XAML is the backbone of Metro style app,So I will be using XAML as UI and C# to code. I will talk about other ways to code using other languages in my upcoming posts.

XAML :

Make sure you set x:Name to the RichTextBlock control (which is very similar to our Silverlight 5 RichTextBox control)

C# Code :

So on visibility of each RichTextBlock I am controlling the UI via Button Click event. Idea is to show Japanese,Arabic and English content on each of the button click and similarly hide other two at the same time.

Output :

Oh wait ! what in case I don’t have Metro UI or for that matter I am running Visual Studio 11 on other box then?, well life is good ! you have a build in and fully functional simulator of Windows 8 which is very realistic in look and feel and behavior of Windows 8 Metro UI,so you will find that option once you wish to start debugging the application like shown here :

and now you are all set to see the output like shown below ! :

You can see shortcut of your Metro UI Style App on the Windows 8 Metro Desktop like this :

You can do much more configuration related settings with package.appmanifest file inside your project,it will help you to get settings like below :

Since this is our first app, I am not going into much more details on the each of the sectional tab shown above, that I will address in my upcoming posts, so now let’s see the final output :

Yahooo ! Our first ever app is ready on Windows 8 using Metro UI style inside Visual Studio 2011. Once you click on each of the button,you will see some language specific text. Well though its very basic, but idea behind is to get familiar with the environment, In upcoming post, I assure to have much more high level apps.

Something about Simulator :

Like Windows Phone 7 emulator, you can rotate this Tab and see app from various angles. It also provides you option to interact app with Mouse and even using Touch like I have shown in the second diagram.

In this way, its very useful and fully functional simulator and helps us a lot and saves lot of efforts,It gives best feel of your app on Windows 8 environment.

So, This is our first “Hello World !” kind of Metro UI style app using Visual Studio 2011 on Windows 8. I hope after reading this post, you will be in position to understand overall environment,better you that, so that you can easily understand my upcoming posts.

Do try this out, Build a small app,meanwhile I will go back to Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2011 and will try to build more solid app integrating some more good,jazzy business related stuff.So stay tuned ! keep visiting here for more !

Vikram.

Silverlight is dead…and our thought process too !

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 13:41:00 +0000

People says that when you dream about someone who you see going to die in your dreams,In reality he/she lives a long ! ..Something similar is going for Silverlight these days.More people saying bad about and more the core platform is growing better day after day.

My post here today is not to shout that I am Silverlight MVP and We are not dead but I just want to trigger a positive thought process so that we will not go dead with current “Silverlight dead” discussions in near future.

Just to clarify :

Thought I love Microsoft technologies a lot and especially Silverlight that does not mean that I am Fanboy and in this post I am defending something. I have equal love and passion towards other MS and Non MS technologies as well. From last 2 yrs I am working in IBM and executing large WPF Projects and also using some Open Source tools and technologies.

I am not employee or decision maker at Microsoft nor I am a complete Windows 8 Master or Metro UI Geek etc. So following stuff is purely based on my personal analysis, Being a community chap I am always open for feedback and do correct me if something I mentioned here is totally wrong.I would love to hear that and add more to me.

“Silverlight is dead !” ..The new story on Internet … :

This all started in last PDC when Microsoft showcase strength of HTML5 + JS on their own platform.I know even initially I was also wondering why they are doing such hype of this platform but then realize and understood entire Development Ecosystem.

I have also wrote a biggie article on that situate here and got positive response from all of you :

Silverlight, HTML5 & Windows 8 : Where we are heading to ?

So before making any final thought,do read that and this article..after that its your call !

Coming back to the subject :

Build event and reactions after keynote :

Few points I would like to take up for discussion -

Why people want every time a commitment from Microsoft Senior representatives like Scott Gu or Steve Ballmer to come on stage and explicitly say that “Silverlight is not dead !!” ? – Same for WPF and other technologies.
Unless one technology is not dead, New and enhanced things never comes up..I mean do you still want Visual Basic 6 if I show you strength of VB.NET or WPF for that matter. Why people are not shouting when Classical ASP,VB6 etc gone dead ? Because there was a need of .NET/WPF somewhere and that’s why they are present today. Same is the case for HTML5,Metrofy Apps and WinRT

Windows 8 as OS and Windows 8 Tablets :

Today I installed Win8 Dev Preview on my Dell XPS and frankly,with Mouse it does not give any feel like it gives on Touch supporting devices.But UI is amazing rather outstanding !
There is a Desktop mode which is similar to normal Windows,So MS is not forcing you to be on Metro all the time,you have choice !
Microsoft is now head to head with other vendors especially to compete devices like iPad.
There are still millions and billions of Windows XP,Windows 7 Users. It takes years to migrate OS for big organizations.(My employer IBM India is still on Windows XP).So entire world will not change in one night time after complete Windows 8 is available.

Some random thoughts on HTML5 Native Apps :

They are amazing ! Something worth to learn and try out.
I don’t think they are true cross platform and will run on Mac ! Correct me here if I am wrong (Silverlight is Cross platform and same code with small modify runs on WP7 as well)
At this moment I am not sure how many will adopt Metrofy or HTML5 + JS platform for “Enterprise Application Development” where we usually plug WCF,WF,MEF,Microsoft Enterprise Library etc.
With Blend Support, Now job is easy to design these HTML5 apps, So Designers will be happy for sure.
Performance and tooling support for HTML5 is in great progress but then same question again..Is it full functional like WPF or Silverlight, Just having similar features and capabilities does not change game totally.

If Microsoft declare death of Silverlight : Think over this..

Do you think people will keep their mouth shut and just obey ? I mean think from WP7 perspective.Think over this..
There are Thousands of App in WP7 Marketplace Up and Running on millions of devices, what will happen to them if Silverlight is dead ?
Do you think Microsoft is just making fun of people from past few years by launching different versions of Silverlight? Today we are in version 5.So think over this..
Do you think Microsoft will say one day that “Silverlight is dead totally..now rollback your apps which are there on your WP7/Marketplace/Web or OOB state” …crazy ! It will not happen like that anyway..think carefully when you say its dead !
What to develop,which language to use : Usually this totally depends on one’s comfort level with the technology.Think over this..

Current Silverlight situation and what to do in future ? :

There is no official statement from Microsoft saying “Silverlight is dead”, So stop right there and don’t follow those garbage and nonsense blogs/posts/discussions/videos/thoughts saying “Silverlight is dead”
Read the feature set of Silverlight 5 Carefully !
Windows 8 / WinRT /.NET 4.5 etc are in “preview” and not even in “Beta" or “RC”..so some features can be added or removed,its common thing in Product development.So it will be too early to make judgments on availability of Silverlight on Windows 8 or with WinRT, Metrofication etc.
Keep track of happening changes in the new Windows 8 Platform, start building small small apps using Visual Studio 2011.
Do more visualization than actual migration.This is not right time to decide whether the new development should be a Metrofy or normal one since entire platform is in preview stage.So even not ideal time to create PoCs since many things will be changing/breaking up/crashing because of preview state.
Follow correct and official Microsoft resources which can be : Microsoft Representatives, Silverlight MVPs and Insiders, DPE Evangelists etc.
Now “XAML” + Code behind of your choice is the buzz word instead of just casually saying its WPF’s XAML or Silverlight’s XAML

What’s the benefit of investing in Silverlight from last few years then ? :

XAML ! Those who are working on WPF and Silverlight..its party time for them since they already have one Rich and Demanding Skillset of XAML
Not much learning curve since Silverlight Developers are already aware of C#,VB.NET and XAML with tools like Expression Blend etc. So they can easily upgrade themselves to Metro UI App Development.
Windows Phone 7.5 aka Mango coming up, Silverlight is the core Application Development platform on phone,So keep your Silverlight skills with you.

Silverlight on Windows 8, Metro Plug-in less browser and other stuff :

Agree and accepted that Silverlight does not work in “Metro IE” in Windows 8 but it does in Windows 8 Desktop mode and again Windows 8 is in preview stage and it will be too early to comment.
See the picture below : Silverlight is still there on those blocks

Visual Studio 11 do comes up with default project template for Silverlight, Check this out :

I tried running my current SL5 apps and they got executed successfully,see this :

Conclusion :

I wrote all this to just trigger positive thought process instead of just shouting and spreading death news of Silverlight. Some things I know you have in mind and which are not clear,but frankly for some of the things even I also don’t have answers and clear vision since this is all a preview platform.

Picture will be more clear when entire platform will go to Beta and then RTM mode.So till the time instead of wasting time in nonsense discussion..lets focus and new Metro UI App using XAML, New HTML5 + JS platform,New Visual Studio 2011 and .NET 4.5 and lets get some good hold on that before making final judgment on Silverlight’s future.

In some of the section above I may sound arrogant and away from subject, but intention of this post is to keep positive focus about platform and build healthy and non biased thought process.

So..Silverlight is dead ? Look back..Think again..Do analysis,spend some time on new platform and then jump to conclusion.

Remember ! Blogs,Forum comments or News blogs people does not deal with your actual client, They are not real decision maker. Its only you and you and you who will take a call on your App Development platform and for Silverlight..lets Microsoft decide on that..It will be better !

Vikram.

Silverlight 5 : Implement “Run” functionality using Platform Invoke (PInvoke)

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:15:00 +0000

I hope you like my last article on PInvoke feature introduced in Silverlight 5 RC. As I mentioned in my last post that I will be posting more and more advance demos of PInvoke in coming days.Well, Today I am going to show you that how you can build “Run” kind of functionality using PInvoke in Silverlight 5 RC,Not getting this idea? Here is “Run” in our Windows look like :

Something similar we are going to develop using PInvoke in terms of look and feel and functionality.Idea is to make use of Shell32.dll’s ShellExecute( ).

I kept UI similar to Windows “Run” for better understanding,It is not exact replica or replacement for Windows “Run”, Idea is to demonstrate the functionality of ShellExecute( ) so I am not trying to break any copyright stuff of original Windows OS.

As discussed in my last article here,following the same steps lets build this component.

Namespace :

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

This is the primary namespace used to develop PInvoke apps.

XAML :

Note that like in Real “Run” box, I am skipping editable dropdown control and Browse button,Here I am taking Textbox to enter parameters and Ok and Cancel Button to handle the same.

UI will look like this after running :

C# Code :

public MainPage()
{
      InitializeComponent();
      App.Current.MainWindow.Title = "Run";
}

#region Shell Execute

[DllImport("shell32.dll")]
static extern IntPtr ShellExecute(
            IntPtr hwnd,
            string lpOperation,
            string lpFile,
            string lpParameters,
            string lpDirectory,
            ShowCommands nShowCmd);

#endregion

private void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
       {
           ShellExecute(System.IntPtr.Zero, "open", Convert.ToString(txtValue.Text), string.Empty, string.Empty, ShowCommands.SW_SHOWNOACTIVATE);
       }

       private void btnCancel_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
       {
           if (App.Current.IsRunningOutOfBrowser)
               App.Current.MainWindow.Close();
       }

Note that you need to build ShowCommands enum, for more information you can visit ShellExecute Documentation on MSDN here

txtValue does the job of taking parameters and passing to ShellExecute.

That’s it ! We are done with our own “Run” box build using Silverlight 5 RC P/Invoke Feature using Shell32.dll ‘s ShellExecute( )

OOB Settings :

Kindly refer my last post where I have given all information about setting trust and what kind of possible exceptions you might get.So read more over there.

Output :

Here are some screenshots I took with our Silverlight 5 based “Run” :

Calling Calculator,Command Prompt and MS Paint from our “Run” box

Visit my blog / any URL using our “Run” box ":

So if we compare Windows’s Run box and our in terms of looks..here we go !

Where this can be applicable in Real life applications ? :

Idea in this demo is to use ShellExecute( ) in Silverlight application,UI can be different or in different formatting.Core idea is to use ShellExecute( ) and make use of that using P/Invoke, Do you want me to share what can be done with ShellExecute( ) ? I know I don’t need to..there are lot of business scenarios where this can be used,For example : Open instances of Word,Excel,Powerpoint,MS Paint,Calculator as I have shown above, Run Command Prompt and run scripts etc.

So I hope you will like this sample once you build and run this. Let me know your feedback and I will soon going to post one more P/Invoke sample in coming weeks along with other good and fun stuff on Silverlight 5 RC and then few interesting things on Windows Phone 7 as well.

Vikram.

Silverlight 5 : Platform Invoke (PInvoke) in Silverlight

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 09:06:00 +0000

Two days back Microsoft announced availability of Silverlight 5 RC,I encourage you to download bits from here, My friend Pete Brown already given very good information on Silverlight 5 RC here.

PInvoke (some type this as p/Invoke) that is Platform Invoke is most awaited feature in Silverlight since the announcement of Roadmap of Silverlight 5.

There are lot of talks in the community about Native HTML5 Apps using JavaScript,I am sure with this feature of PInvoke,Silverlight is now equally powerful player in App Development.

Why I kept above text in Bold? This is because there is lot of HTML5 talks around and sometime people unnecessarily without judging pulling Silverlight down for no good reason.For those who think we are Dead or we are just Animation technology..well by this feature you folks must have realize the potential of this Silverlight platform and where we are heading towards.

Coming back to PInvoke,So today to start with,I am putting forward a very simple and basic demo of PInvoke for you to understand and grab the topic and get hold of it.Then in next article I will be putting some advance samples and also in coming days I will be covering few more Silverlight 5 topics as well.

This demo is based on calling a “Beep” functionality from kernel32.dll file from Windows

If your fundas of PInvoke are not clear,In that case I encourage you to have a look at this article on Wikipedia which talks about PInvoke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PInvoke

Our First Silverlight PInvoke Demo : Beep !!..Beep !!…

Namespace :

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

This is the primary namespace used to develop PInvoke apps.

XAML :

I just taken a Road Runner Image as name of the demo is Beep Beep

C# Code :

Now what we are going to do is that we will invoke Beep function which is a System Beep function from kernel32.dll

#region Beep Module
       [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
       [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
       static extern bool Beep(uint dwFreq, uint dwDuration);
#endregion

[DllImport…] specified which dll file we are invoking.”SetLastError” is actually a Named Parameter in the signature which indicate whether the callee calls the SetLastError Win32 API function before returning from attribute method.

So we are all set to call Beep function from kernel32.dll in our Silverlight app like shown below :

public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MainPage_Loaded);
        }

        void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {

            for (uint i = 100; i <= 200; i=i+10)
            {
                Beep(i,100);
            }
        }

Done ! We have just develop our first PInvoke Sample using Silverlight 5 RC !

Now turn on your speakers and get ready to hear Beep !! Beep !! from Road Runner ..I mean you will get some sound / default sound from system.If you want to change bits and duration then go ahead and feel free to tune the code.

Oh ! Wait ! What’s this error about? :

This is Runtime Exception because of lacking of trust,so you need to turn on that in OOB setting like this :

To know more on this Trust part I encourage you to read my friend Kunal’s article here.

Output : (Turn On the Speakers for Beep)

This ends our first ever PInvoke functionality using Silverlight 5 RC.I request you to download new RC bits and try out this demo,meanwhile I will prepare my next advance demo of PInvoke and other few articles.So with this PInvoke I can say again that ..Future is Bright ! Future is Silverlight !!

Vikram.

Silverlight 5 : Low-Latency Sound Effects

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:46:00 +0000

I just keep switching between Windows Phone and Silverlight and in office its WPF,so many technical flavors in a week I taste,Well today I am going to talk on Silverlight back again.Lot many features announced with Silverlight 5 beta.Few weeks back I did share few things with you like Text improvement and Window class etc. and I got very good response for that from all of you.Thanks for that.

Today I am going to talk on some interesting feature set of Low-Latency Sound Effects and how you can incorporate that inside your application.This feature is useful especially in Media and Entertainment related apps and bit away from actual Line of Business apps.For example, Gun shots,Game Over-Game Start sounds,Level change sounds,Notifications etc.For XNA developers who write games for Windows Phone 7 are in good position to understand this since there they use this SoundEffects heavily.

For this you need to take help of XNA library which will give you SoundEffect class,so you need Namespace :

using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio;

Structure of SoundEffect class is like this :

public sealed class SoundEffect : IDisposable
    {
        [SecuritySafeCritical]
        public SoundEffect(byte[] buffer, int sampleRate, AudioChannels channels);
        [SecuritySafeCritical]
        public SoundEffect(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count, int sampleRate, AudioChannels channels, int loopStart, int loopLength);

        public TimeSpan Duration { get; }
        public bool IsDisposed { get; }
        public static float MasterVolume { get; set; }

        public SoundEffectInstance CreateInstance();
        public void Dispose();
        public static SoundEffect FromStream(Stream stream);
        public static TimeSpan GetSampleDuration(int sizeInBytes, int sampleRate, AudioChannels channels);
        public static int GetSampleSizeInBytes(TimeSpan duration, int sampleRate, AudioChannels channels);
        public bool Play();
        public bool Play(float volume, float pitch, float pan);
    }

Demo :

I am not a hardcore Game developer but being movie buff,I am putting one Horror Image and on loading of that I am playing some scary music and on clicking on that image some more sound effects will be played.So this is background of this demo,first let me share how it will look like, well its simple image of ghost and rest is game of sound effects.

*Note : Image used here is taken from internet and used here just for demo purpose,Image have its own respective copyrights.

Design :

For this demo you can use any design of your choice,I am just putting one scary image,I was actually planning to make some short movie with animations and change opacity etc, but I am leaving that creative part for you.

So I am just focusing on playing sound effect.

Namespace :

using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio;

C# Code :

private void img_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
        {
            var ScramStream = Application.GetResourceStream(new Uri("Shot.wav", UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute));
            ScreamEffect = SoundEffect.FromStream(ScramStream.Stream);
            ScreamEffect.Play();
        }

This will load “Shot.wav” file and play the same once you click on that Image. Make sure that the “wav” file is PCM encoded file and falls between 22.5,48.5khz sample rate else your “wav” format will not get load and hence you will not have any sound effect.Also it should be 8 or 16 bit mono or stereo.

If you want to play effect and tweak the things then SoundEffectInstance will help you to do this.Sound.You can use properties like Pitch,Pan Volume etc.See code below, you will get idea how you can do things with SoundEffectInstance

SoundEffectInstance HorrorSound = ScreamEffect.CreateInstance();
HorrorSound.Pitch = 3.0f;
HorrorSound.Pan = 1.5f;
HorrorSound.Play();

What you can do more is to put this code in Timer (Instance of DispatcherTimer) and play the same.If you want to dig further you can visit MSDN for more on SoundEffect Class here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd282429.aspx

So, This is all about the Low-Latency Sound Effect in Silverlight 5 beta.Soon I will share few more Multimedia related features in coming days and will try to cover remaining features of Silverlight 5 Beta in coming weeks on which I haven’t discuss anything here.Till then you can try this demo and let me know your feedback for the same.

Vikram.

Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit for ‘Mango’ : Getting Started

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 15:32:00 +0000

After a long time rather after a month got some free time to look at this place.Horrible work at office as usual.Well,before I start posting some cool stuff on Windows Phone 7.1 and Silverlight 5 again.Lets get ready with tools again.

Microsoft announced Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit recently and its worth downloading since it is now revised with some bug fixes, smooth performance and decent controls by which you can build good quality apps for your Mango Platform aka WP 7.1

Name : Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit SDK 7.1 (“Mango”) August 2011

Downloads :

msi : http://silverlight.codeplex.com/releases/view/71550#DownloadId=270984

nuget : http://nuget.org/List/Packages/SilverlightToolkitWP

Some new in this Toolkit :

ExpanderView - for building expanding and collapsing items
PhoneTextBox - for enhanced text box with action icon support, watermarking, etc.
DateTimePickers - for Date and Time into apps
HubTitle- for building animated and informative tiles
LockablePivots - for displaying current item only usually used with multiple selection
MultiSelectList - for multiple selection with lists of data scenarios
LongListSelector - redesigned for Mango to give smooth scroll

Where to Report Bugs, feedback suggestions for this Toolkit ? :

http://silverlight.codeplex.com/workitem/list/basic

So this is sufficient for you people to get ready with the tools and very soon I will start posting samples and quick demos on top of this toolkit.Not much break now and I will be back here soon.

Why I & this blog was on silent mode for last couple of weeks :

Done some presentations on Silverlight & Windows Phone 7 in community last month
Building some cool demos on Silverlight 5,Work in Progress

Some random snaps from my recent Silverlight & Windows Phone 7 sessions in community at Pune, India :

So folks, see you very soon with some good quality stuff on Silverlight 5 and Windows Phone 7.1 here,have a great week ahead !

Vikram.

I am Silverlight MVP and I am still here for Silverlight

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 16:19:00 +0000

I am Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Silverlight Year 2011-2012

This is my 4th time to won Microsoft MVP Award and 3rd time for Silverlight.On 1st July 2011 I got following Email from Microsoft MVP Award Program :

Things which I am doing from last few years made me MVP again :

I am doing Blog posts here for you and you only,I love this activity. Also I delivered few sessions on Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 in my local community,More you can see at my Public Microsoft MVP Profile here :

https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/profile/vikram.pendse

I keep on updating things on this portal as soon as I contribute something towards you, A log kind of thing you can say. This is helpful for me especially when I become lazy, It’s a wake up call for me and reminds me to drop all laziness and start working on again.

What went wrong for me in Year 2010 and early 2011 :

I recently rather now 4-5 months back went under 2 surgeries on my kidney,it was nothing critical health issue though but because of that there was some gap in my work and activities. It took almost 2-3 months to come things on track again.Hence during Early December to Mid March I was bit idle and isolated from technology, In month of April and May also I suffer from high fever for 2 weeks which again kept me away from Computer.

Well, I am very much thankful to my family,close friends and off course you people,my readers ! with your support from July 2010 I was able to come out of this unhealthy scenario and what I did from July 2010 to December 2010 given me big energy to contribute by which I was able to contribute again in last couple of months like from April to July 2011.

My MVP Lead Abhishek Kant is also a key person throughout my MVP awards from year 2008, without his guidance it was not possible to come to this stage and win MVP Award for 4 times in a row. Thanks to him as well.

Year 2010 was not easy ! Year 2011-2012 - Difficult life ahead, Be ready :

Beside my Health, there was loads of fumes and fire flames, Horrifying pain which cause due to that “Silverlight will not be focus” kind of announcement made by Microsoft. Growing giant of HTML5 not only kept me on fire but it was like a cold war. It was difficult time wherein most of my time went to define Silverlight and HTML5 and their capabilities to Customer, Now somehow I can see things coming to normal.

In India, Microsoft Windows Phone 7 ecosystem didn’t made any significant progress in terms of availability of Marketplace and overall development in year 2010. So I took decision and gamble a bit to focus also on Windows Phone 7 beside Silverlight. It worked well for me as Silverlight was mutual platform. I am very happy now that I did my best to initiate Windows Phone 7 moment from my end towards community at my best.

I am very clear with my role on Silverlight and HTML5 which I blogged recently here. With the rumors of HTML5 + JS will be one of the stake holders for developing Windows 8 Apps,Now its time to identify and define Role of Silverlight. Microsoft may define role of Silverlight after Build event but we must start defining role of Silverlight for our work from this very day.

Uncertainty is just next door,yes I am serious,See this post :

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-retire-refocus-windows-phone-mvp-program/9897

Sad and painful news but its truth, So you will never know where you will be next year !

We will be together for Silverlight Today,Tomorrow and in future :

As Microsoft MVP for Silverlight and as Silverlight Insider, I assure you all that I will give my best in year 2011-12 and I will try my best to spend more and more time in with you in terms of Blog posts, Code Samples and Videos.

Silverlight 5 and Windows Phone 7 will be my prime focus, but beside that there is a wild and crazy plan to start looking into HTML5 and WPF as well.

So thanks once again for all your love,feedback,support and wish you will continue the same in year 2011-12 as well.Keep visiting this place and keep me buzzing,I am here for you all the time for Silverlight.

Thanks once again and Keep our quote in mind always :

Future is Bright because future is Silverlight !!

Vikram.

Prototyping Windows Phone 7 Applications using SketchFlow

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 15:16:00 +0000

I should actually say “Prototyping Windows Phone 7 / 7.1 Applications using SketchFlow” since let it be ver. 7 or 7.1, The way we are going to do prototyping will remain the same.

What is Prototyping and SketchFlow and why to use that? :

Those hardcore developers who are not involved in Designing phase of application usually not much aware of Prototyping and SketchFlow and power of both.Like we see Movie Trailer before actual Movie comes to Cinema Hall, There we get glimpse of Movie and what it will be all about. On the same line, SketchFlow which is the new way of doing Prototypes using Microsoft Expression Blend give glimpse of your application and how it will look like. So being a developer question may come to your mind that why we should use this? Well to answer you, I have already done a series on Prototyping and SketchFlow for Silverlight in past, Those articles will give you more better idea about these,so take some time out and visit those articles as well, you can find them below :

Part 1:

http://pendsevikram.blogspot.com/2009/10/expression-blend-3-sketch-flow-new-era.html

Part 2:

http://pendsevikram.blogspot.com/2009/10/expression-blend-3-sketchflow-new-era.html

Part 3:

http://pendsevikram.blogspot.com/2009/11/expression-blend-3-sketchflow-new-era.html

SketchFlow for Windows Phone :

When you install Expression Blend Designer for Windows Phone or Expression Blend in general you will not get any special or additional Project Template for SketchFlow which you usually get for Silverlight. So I am using the SketchFlow Project Template published on Codeplex site here :

http://wp7sketchflow.codeplex.com/

Creating SketchFlow for your Windows Phone Application :

After installing you will find Windows Phone SketchFlow Project Template inside your Microsoft Expression Blend 4 instance like this :

Once you select this template, Then your design works start,To start with, You can pick few Mockups from Mockup option and also can make use of Controls in sketchflow like this :

For my demo, I am making use of Pivot Control and Pivot Item, you can always connect multiple screens to each other and navigate between them. Designer will look like this :

Once I took Pivot it was looking like this :

If you have multiple screens, you can always track them with the help of SketchFlow Map given with Expression Blend 4 SketchFlow,It will help you to give Macro view of your Design / Prototype, It looks like :

Once you are done with the Design you can Press F5 and Run that in Browser and it will look like this in your Browser :

Inside that, you have various options like Map,Feedback etc. You can give feedback like this :

If above things I mentioned looks difficult for you to understand, Take a look at 5 mins Video below which I have recorded via Microsoft Expression Encoder Screen Capture Utility (Check this post which will guide you how to use that utility)

Using SketchFlow for Windows Phone by Vikram Pendse–MVP Silverlight

The beauty of SketchFlow is that it allows you to export your project as “Word Document” So for that all you need to do is go to File->Export to MS Word option and you are done ! The word document generated by SketchFlow looks like this :

Well, That all today from me, Hope you like this post and I am sure you will try this out and make best use of the same in your Windows Phone 7 Projects. I am going for weekend Bike Ride and will back from there with great ideas for upcoming posts, Till that time you guys enjoy and try this out,See you soon.

Vikram.

Mango : Using DeviceStatus in Windows Phone 7.1

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 17:02:00 +0000

First of all “Thank You” for your wonderful response and comments on my last article on Silverlight Vs HTML5 ,I hope you like the points I raised there and I will soon write more about it in future.Today I am going to share information on DeviceStatus API and how it helps to give more information about Windows Phone Device.

Information :

DeviceStatus is a static class and you can find the same in Microsoft.Phone.Info Namespace. DeviceStatus exposes bunch of static properties and two events of keyboard and powersource respectively. Properties are like below :

ApplicationCurrentMemoryUsage
ApplicationPeakMemoryUsage
DeviceFirmwareVersion
DeviceHardwareVersion
DeviceManufacturer
DeviceName
DeviceTotalMemory
PowerSource

and two more boolean properties with events I mentioned above.

XAML :

I have taken TextBlocks to display information as shown above which I am assigning from Code Behind,So XAML will be like this :

</Grid>

C# Code :

General Declaration :

DispatcherTimer dptm = new DispatcherTimer();

Constructor :

// Constructor
public MainPage()
{
    InitializeComponent();
    dptm.Interval = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5);
    dptm.Tick += new EventHandler(dptm_Tick);
    dptm.Start();
    this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MainPage_Loaded);
}

I have added DispatcherTimer just to get real time memory status and nothing else.

void dptm_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
txtApplicationCurrentMemoryUsage.Text = "Application Current Memory Usage : " + Microsoft.Phone.Info.DeviceStatus.ApplicationCurrentMemoryUsage.ToString();
txtApplicationPeakMemoryUsage.Text = "Application Peak Memory Usage : " + Microsoft.Phone.Info.DeviceStatus.ApplicationPeakMemoryUsage.ToString();
}

void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
WP7DeviceStatus();
}

public void WP7DeviceStatus()
{
     txtDeviceFirmwareVersion.Text = "Firmware Version : " + Microsoft.Phone.Info.DeviceStatus.DeviceFirmwareVersion.ToString();
     txtDeviceHardwareVersion.Text = "Hardware Version : " + Microsoft.Phone.Info.DeviceStatus.DeviceHardwareVersion.ToString();
     txtDeviceManufacturer.Text = "Manufacturer : " + Microsoft.Phone.Info.DeviceStatus.DeviceManufacturer.ToString();
     txtDeviceName.Text = "Device Name : " + Microsoft.Phone.Info.DeviceStatus.DeviceName.ToString();
     txtDeviceTotalMemory.Text = "Total Memory : " + Microsoft.Phone.Info.DeviceStatus.DeviceTotalMemory.ToString();
     txtPowerSource.Text = "Power Source : " + Microsoft.Phone.Info.DeviceStatus.PowerSource.ToString();
}

finally this will look like this on Device, As it is running on Emulator hence most of the information will be change after it goes on actual device.

Output :

Remember that its always good to notify user that your application is recording this information if at all your application is storing this information somewhere for some kind of analysis is getting perform on the same or using this data for application. Soon I will be posting full end to end application there I will be showing the exact use of this DeviceStatus.However I hope you will explore it and start using it in your Windows Phone application.As I shown above,it is very simple to implement. I am soon posting some advance tutorials on Mango in coming days. I don’t want to push to much which will create confusion for you, So I am posting basic articles to start with and then we will slowly go ahead at different higher levels.

So try out this API and I will be back soon with some more interesting demos on Mango, There is lot to show and talk on Mango and I am at background exploring lot many things,so keep visiting here as I will be posting some good stuff on Mango in coming days.

Vikram.

Silverlight, HTML5 & Windows 8 : Where we are heading to ?

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 19:52:00 +0000

This is not the post or yet another post on most happening debate of Silverlight and HTML5, This is just a visit to all of them to realize the potential in each and see what we can make best out of it.

I recently attended Microsoft MVP Open Day 2011 organized for South Asia in Microsoft IDC at Hyderabad, India. It was amazing to meet fellow MVPs and we had lot of learning and too much fun. During my visit, I met many glorious minds who are doing amazing stuff for Web and we had some discussions on this topic especially Silverlight and HTML5.By points raised in this discussion and overall stuff came out during my last year Communities and Customer interactions that I am going to put down for you.

Silverlight : Past,Present and Future

I have already posted about my thoughts on Silverlight Vs HTML5 here. Day by day situation is getting worst and confusing, So I thought to write this post actually. Initially even I was confused and frustrated about what happened in last PDC event. With recent Video which came up for Windows 8 added more fuel to the discussion of HTML5 and Silverlight. If you have not seen this video,please do once :

Building “Windows 8”–Video #1

After this video and when there was mention of HTML5 + JS, Fumes started coming up and people’s reactions and anger was spontaneous.

I saw some deadly thread on Silverlight.net forums talking about the same, Check this.

What’s happening to Developers with this cold war of Silverlight & HTML5 :

With the Previews of HTML5 shown by Microsoft with IE9 and IE10 Platform preview and from other vendors, There is a great confusion among people that Microsoft is no longer focusing on Silverlight or they have stop investments on the same. We all agree that HTML5 came up with some jazzy stuff which can do better things with less lines of codes and without plugin.

There are so many things one can pick up for Web Development these days.

ASP.NET MVC
PHP
HTML5 + JS
Silverlight | RIA Services
Adobe Flash | Air

JQuery goes well with many of them. If you look at cost wise effective solution, HTML and PHP comes out as a natural choice, If you look at flexibility, Value added features and rich tooling then ASP.NET and Silverlight are good choice. So as far as Web Apps which will get into use via Browser, There is less confusion. For very rich apps either one can go for Silverlight or Flash depending upon the client requirement and business scenarios.

Advantages :

Silverlight comes here as Advantage due to its Out Of Browser capabilities along with similar availability from Flash/Air but they are clear winner over other languages.
With Rich Tools like Expression Studio and features like Sketch Flow, Overall experience is way better
Rich UI, Managed Code, Cross Browser and Cross Platform, Easy Development
Great Capabilities and features for designing and developing Line of Business applications.
Support with various new patters and frameworks like MVVM, MEF etc.
Sandbox Architecture, Secure and lightweight framework

Some Disadvantages : I am not biased here…

Plug-in based Architecture and dependent on Plug-in
Cost involved in Tooling
Not truly Cross Platform (See later section)
Limitations due to Size of Plug-in and CoreCLR functionalities
Learning Curve is bit high compare to HTML

Where exactly things are getting wrong ! :

From IE9 and IE10 Platform Previews, People assumed that Silverlight is near death.Reality : Silverlight 5 is announced with tons of new features,Currently its in Beta stage.
Microsoft created more Hype of HTML5 while showcasing IE9 and IE10 Preview.Reality: Yes ! Even I was confused that what they are exactly promoting Browser or HTML5 ? but the idea behind showing HTML5 is nothing but to showcase the Power of IE9 and 10 and how better they support HTML5,That’s it !
HTML5 will replace many things that Silverlight is capable of giving. Reality : Yes ! ..but Wait ! for some of the functionalities and stuff it will really be less effort,I mean what you do in 10 lines of Code in Silverlight,HTML5 might do it in 3-4 lines/Tags or vice versa !
HTML5 Standardization,OOB and LOB Apps capability.Reality : Till whatever little I heard of HTML5 and its capabilities, Nothing beats Silverlight here in first shot ! HTML5 may ease the overall process of Designing and Developing Business Apps, but the current feature set provided by Silverlight and RIA Services is far way Rich in all aspects.
Silverlight OOB Vs WPF. Reality : Both have 2 common things, XAML and C# that does not mean they are equal,One is .NET Framework of around 200+MB and one is CoreCLR of around 6MB, Should I tell more differences? I don’t think so ! WPF is more strong especially on Desktop Apps (XBAP Story we all know ! ), So Role of OOB is always different and it was never to compete or replace WPF
Availability on Tablets with upcoming Windows 8.Reality : Currently Microsoft is saying that you can design and develop Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 + JS (How they are going to give support to build native Windows apps using HTML5 + JS is also a puzzle for me) but during the course they never said that you cannot Design,Develop and Run Silverlight Apps on it or Silverlight is blocked or something. So let’s wait and let’s not waste time in thinking what will happen in near future, Since even if you think still you don’t know what will happen when.

Where HTML5 is getting ahead ?

There are set of people who do not want Plug-in based development for their own reasons
There are set of people (end users) who don’t wish to download any plug-in on their machines
There are set of people who do not wish to invest in heavy tooling and want to get things done quickly with less cost
HTML5 like its earlier versions runs smoothly in all browsers
HTML5 support is available in Visual Studio 2010
This is big one ! : You cannot view,read,watch Silverlight sites in Windows Phone 7’s IE Browser even after Mango Update but you can view,read and interact with HTML5 + JS pages on Windows Phone 7’s Browser.So if you develop Jazzy Silverlight Website and if your customer wish to view that on his Windows Phone 7..I have no words here !
Silverlight presence on Windows 8 is not clear to anyone since Windows 8 itself is in very early stage,even its pre-preview stage you can say,So it will not good to comment on that at this point of time.

My 0.02$ on this situation :

As I said in my earlier Silverlight Vs HTML5 post, Customer is King ! Understand his business,Understand his requirements, Match them with technologies you have and go ahead, No matter if you may have to adopt HTML5 if it comes out to be better solution.
If someone says in some event that HTML5 is future or we have change or shifted our focus that does not mean that Silverlight is dead after completing that statement. So keep your cool ! Microsoft Silverlight Team is working at their best (I am Silverlight MVP and Insider, So who else know better? :) )
Do not worry about Windows 8 and what will happen, focus on your current development. Even if Windows 8 comes to market, there will be still tons and millions of apps still running on Vista and Windows 7.Everyone in the world will not get Windows 8 Tablet on Day One !
Learn HTML5,See how you can combine HTML5 with JS and make simpler things more simpler and fast which might take time or painful to do in Silverlight.It will always add value to your Customer and you as well.
I don’t see any other option but HTML5 if you wish your Browser App to be visible and interactive in browser of Windows Phone 7,So bit hard decision for you here.

Lastly :

Keep faith ! Silverlight is going smoothly and has very good future and it will be shining on various fronts. Take wise decisions before jumping to HTML5 from Silverlight and vice-versa.Do not blindly follow anyone’s opinion (including me) about Silverlight and HTML5. Build PoCs for HTML5 and for Silverlight 5, See what and how best you can give your Customers and End Users. Don’t get confuse between HTML5 and Silverlight,Both are way different in behavior. Feel free to buzz Silverlight MVPs, Silverlight Forums, Local Community Experts if you need any advice on Silverlight or making choice between Silverlight and HTML5, We will always help you at our best and guide you without having any bias in mind.

Why I wrote this post ?

This post is not written because I have no content to write on Silverlight or Windows Phone 7,I will be doing the next Technical post soon.This post is not written to defend or promote Silverlight or HTML5. This post is just written to touch some reality and ground level issues which one should keep in mind instead of getting confuse by what is going on other forums,blogs and news.

This post is never final answer to that endless debate of Silverlight and HTML5 but I am sure it will always give you better views and basic points which are important in future for your decision making.

These points are not already recorded or guided by someone,These are all outcome of my community interaction and what I see,feel and interact with people for Silverlight and Windows Phone 7.

Hope you will think positively over this topic, Take part in Silverlight Vs HTML5 threads and discussions actively but learn out of it and do not get lost in that ! Do not let your Silverlight Weapon down ! Respect compete technologies, Learn HTML5 slowly (I might help you in that via this blog in near future),Take HTML5 change happening with world positively,Give your customer what is best and make people happy !

Remember ! Future is Bright because Future is Silverlight !!

Vikram.

*Please note that Images and Video used in this post are from Internet found during regular search, Images have their respective copyrights and they are part of this post just for demo/representation purpose.

Mango : How to use RichTextBox in Windows Phone 7.1

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:33:00 +0000

Today I am going to talk about RichTextBox, I know you must be having lot of expectations from this RichTextBox. Here I will try my best to make you aware of what will work and what will not work in this short post for RichTextBox in Windows Phone 7.1

RichTextBox control is not new for Silverlightians, We have already seen amazing implementation of the same in Apps developed using Silverlight on top of RichTextBox Control.It is supported in Silverlight ver. 4 & 5 and now in Windows Phone 7.1

Use of RichTextBox is to display text in rich format which includes images and hyperlinks and also various styles of font,font family and sizes in formatted form. You can find RichTextBox control in System.Windows.dll, v2.0.50727 and you can invoke the same using Namespace System.Windows.Controls where RichTextBox Class is inherited from Control Class and it exposes various properties and events.

To add RichTextBox control on your design layout of your Windows Phone 7.1 you don’t need to add any extra references and stuff however you will find that RichTextBox though its part of System.Windows.Controls does not sit in Toolbox. So all you need to do is put a Container as StackPanel and hit Control + Space and pick RichTextBox from intellisense.

It will look like this on your Designer inside Visual Studio :

Please make a kind note that there is no design support for RichTextBox in Windows Phone 7.1, Also no default style present so I used Static Resource, Firstly I fumbled a lot and saw that output was not coming on the phone.

Well, Before I move ahead please make note of this :

RichTextBox does not have Default Style
It is not part of your Toolbox but also you don’t need to add any extra references,you can find it in intellisense
It supports FlowDirect property so you can have RightToLeft and LeftToRight flow of text
However by default it is in ReadOnly mode so at the moment with current bits you cannot play with it beyond limit
Hyperlinks and Images can be part of content but since currently this control is in ReadOnly mode hence these features might not add value
Indic does not getting displayed thought with Mango core platform goes as Silverlight 4. Indic simply breaks..Sorry for my friends in India for this
Like Silverlight 5 Beta RichTextBox, It does not supporting any OverflowContentTarget so as to push text in next RichTextBox

Lets now see what all we can do with this :

XAML :

<StackPanel>
      <RichTextBox x:Name="txtMyRTBx" ... >
      <Paragraph>
      <Run FontFamily="Lucida Sans Unicode"
       Text="春が来た
                春が来た春が来たどこに来た
                山に来た里に来た野にも来た

花が咲く花が咲くどこに咲く
山に咲く里に咲く野にも咲く

                鳥がなく鳥がなくどこでなく
                山でなく里でなく野でもなく"/>
      </Paragraph>
      </RichTextBox>
</StackPanel>

This will look like following on your emulator :

Kindly make note that though its Non English language here or symbolic that does not mean you cannot apply styles. You can very well make such text Bold,Italic and Underline.

To emphasize my bulleted point above about Language rendering capability and FlowDirection, here is a small piece of XAML to showcase Arabic text flowing from LeftToRight :

XAML :

and it will look like this on your emulator :

As I mentioned above that you can make Text as Bold Italic and even you can insert Hyperlink, for that here is a small piece of XAML to showcase that area :

XAML :

<StackPanel>
      <RichTextBox x:Name="txtMyRTBx" ... >
      <Paragraph>
          <Run FontFamily="Lucida Sans Unicode" Text=" Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta makes significant strides forward, and enables you to build many classes of applications that were not previously possible. "/>
            <Bold Foreground="Yellow">I am Bold !</Bold>
                <Italic Foreground="Green">I am Italic ! </Italic>
                <Underline Foreground="Gold"> Its line under me !! </Underline>
    A first look at the new <Hyperlink NavigateUri="http://www.buildwindows.com">"Windows 8"</Hyperlink> user interface.
      </Paragraph>
      </RichTextBox>
</StackPanel>

and it will look like this on your emulator :

No wonder that we can always play with it from Code behind, Well if you want to see XAML behind this in your app then you can also use snippet like this :

void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
MessageBox.Show(txtMyRTBx.Xaml.ToString());
}

This will show the Xaml piece of code on screen like this :

So that’s all I want to share on this topic at the moment,Being ReadOnly it pulls me back from lot of ideas but I am sure I will be putting up amazing and crazy samples in coming days, I don’t want to bombard you with <bold><italic> and <Underline> etc tags in the post so I pushed some language support in between which I hope you will like it very much. I know by looking at that language you will surely give try to your local language and build app on top of it. Go ahead and enjoy every bit of this control.

As I said above,I don’t want to waste your valuable time in small small snippets on <bold><italic> so if you still want to dig down on this, you can visit this MSDN Page where you will get all relevant stuff about usage of RichTextBox. So check that out, meanwhile I will go back and come here with some more cool stuff on Mango and Silverlight in coming week. So have a great weekend ahead with Mango and Silverlight 5 !

Vikram.

*Note : I used Translator tools for Arabic and Japanese demos here, I know Japanese because I learn that for 2 years but I do not know anyting about Arabic, So if you find the Arabic or Japanese Text in above demo irrelevant or not grammatically correct then please forgive me since its only used for demonstration purpose.

Mango : DeviceNetworkInformation in Windows Phone 7.1

noreply@blogger.com (Vikram Pendse) — Fri, 27 May 2011 18:05:00 +0000

Hope you already downloaded Windows Phone 7.1 Mango Beta Tools as I mentioned in my last post here

Today I am going to talk about DeviceNetworkInformation API with small demo. This API is exposed with the new toolset and very useful especially when you need to check various things related to Mobile Operator. Let’s have a look in more depth about this API.

What this API does ? :

This API helps you to identify and know more about Network capabilities by which one can identify Availability of Network, Availability of Roaming Data and WiFi Network etc. How to make use of this in your Windows Phone 7.1 app its totally your call and it is dependent on your Application Requirement. So I will leave this “Where to use” part to you.

Structure of DeviceNetworkInformation API :

DeviceNetworkInformation is a static class insider Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation namespace having few boolean properties and ResolveHostNameAsync method and NetworkAvailabilityChanged. Since all the properties are static you don’t need to create instance. Properties are

CellularMobileOperator
IsCellularDataEnabled
IsCellularDataRoamingEnabled
IsNetworkAvailable
IsWiFiEnabled

It resides in Microsoft.Phone.dll(v2.0.50727) which you can find in WindowsPhone71 directory.

General Structure is like this :

namespace Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation
{
    [SecuritySafeCritical]
    public static class DeviceNetworkInformation
    {
        public static string CellularMobileOperator { get; }
        public static bool IsCellularDataEnabled { get; }
        public static bool IsCellularDataRoamingEnabled { get; }
        public static bool IsNetworkAvailable { get; }
        public static bool IsWiFiEnabled { get; }

public static event EventHandler<NetworkNotificationEventArgs> NetworkAvailabilityChanged;

        public static void ResolveHostNameAsync(DnsEndPoint endPoint, NameResolutionCallback callback, object context);
        public static void ResolveHostNameAsync(DnsEndPoint endPoint, NetworkInterfaceInfo networkInterface, NameResolutionCallback callback, object context);
    }
}
Now Let’s build one small App on top of this API, So here are steps :

How it will look like :

*Please note that Images used in this post are from Internet found during regular search, Images have their respective copyrights and they are part of this post just for demo purpose.

XAML :

<StackPanel x:Name="TitlePanel" Grid.Row="0" Margin="12,17,0,28">
            <TextBlock x:Name="ApplicationTitle" Text="Explore .NET With Vikram Pendse" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextNormalStyle}"/>
            <TextBlock x:Name="PageTitle" Text="Network Info" Margin="9,-7,0,0" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}"/>
        </StackPanel>

<Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">
            <Image Source="GSMNetwork.jpg" Opacity="0.3" Height="607" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="-2,-6,0,0" Name="image1" Stretch="Fill" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="458" />
            <TextBlock FontWeight="Bold" x:Name="txtMobileOptr" Height="30" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,104,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="450" />
            <TextBlock FontWeight="Bold" x:Name="txtNetworkAvail" Height="30" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,158,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="450" />
            <TextBlock FontWeight="Bold" x:Name="txtCDEnable" Height="30" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,212,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="450" />
            <TextBlock FontWeight="Bold" x:Name="txtRoaming" Height="30" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="2,269,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="448" />
            <TextBlock FontWeight="Bold" x:Name="txtWiFi" Height="56" TextWrapping="Wrap" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,325,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="450" />
            <Image x:Name="imgWiFi" Height="150" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="228,431,0,0" Stretch="Fill" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="200" />
        </Grid>

So on designer layout in Visual Studio it will look like this :

C# Code :

void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
GetDeviceNetworkInformation();
}

public void GetDeviceNetworkInformation()
{
     txtMobileOptr.Text = "Your Mobile Operator is : " + DeviceNetworkInformation.CellularMobileOperator.ToString();

     if (DeviceNetworkInformation.IsNetworkAvailable)
        txtNetworkAvail.Text = "Network is Available";
     else
        txtNetworkAvail.Text = "Network is Not Available";

// Similarly you can get and set other properties to Textblocks

}

Output :

Now if you need to make it more Jazzy you can put icons and make it more attractive and friendly. For example, I have done for Wi Fi, I am showing Wi Fi enable – disable by displaying PNG file like this :

I know the images used here are bit dull,but idea is to show how you can enhance the app by such ideas and code for this is very simple like this :

if (DeviceNetworkInformation.IsWiFiEnabled)
{
    txtWiFi.Text = "You are connected to WiFi Network";
    Uri uri = new Uri(@"wificon.png", UriKind.Relative);
    ImageSource imgSource = new BitmapImage(uri);
    imgWiFi.Source = imgSource;
}
else
{
    txtWiFi.Text = "You are not connected to WiFi Network,Check your WiFi Settings and Retry";
    Uri uri = new Uri(@"wifidiscon.png", UriKind.Relative);
    ImageSource imgSource = new BitmapImage(uri);
    imgWiFi.Source = imgSource;
}

So this is how you can make use of DeviceNetworkInformation in your Windows Phone 7.1 Application, As I mentioned earlier that how you will use this is totally your choice and depends on business scenario, But next time when you need all Network related information inside your app, you don’t need to search, The solution is already with you with this API. See you then with more good stuff on Mango aka Windows Phone 7.1 in coming posts.Keep buzzing over emails and in comment section as usual.

Vikram.